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Sunday, January 18, 2015

Trying New Things with Paper

For those of you who are regular readers, you will know that I've been doing various and sporadic experiments with paper cutting/paper crafting over the past year. I started last February, but have picked up the pace more in the last few months along with accumulating useful supplies. It's sort of overwhelming thinking about all of the supplies I'd like to acquire/could acquire.However, in the spirit of just getting out there and trying, I decided to take a stab at some simple projects and share them with you here. So often, it's easy to be a victim of putting something off until you have all of the possible supplies, have the perfect instructional book, "have all of your ducks in a row," etc. I've spent way too much time in my life thinking I need to wait until something's perfect. Cheesy though it may be, I hope this post will inspire you to just try something new and fun.My current wave of inspiration started when I read my favorite DIYer's Christmas gift tag blog post on Mixed Method. It directly inspired a few tricks I pulled out with gift tags for my gifts. Reading another Mixed Method post a few weeks ago led me to the Lawn Fawn YouTube channel. I ended up staying up way too late watching these videos and drooling over die cut machines, BUT, I also found this video on how to make a mini journal. I loosely followed the instructions presented in this video below.Here I present three different projects, one being the journal mentioned above. For these projects I used:

-thesis paper (I've had this forever, was a good occasion to use up some more!)

I made 2 matching double-sided bookmarks, an anniversary card for my parents, and a card sized journal. I apologize for the lighting on these photos!

Bookmarks:

Front of Anniversary Card:

I liked the ribbon not quite matching up, but that is definitely an aesthetic choice.

Journal (For this project, I printed out one of my favorite quotes and its source/attribution to decorate the cover and inside cover. My paper trimmer hasn't arrived yet, so I used craft scissors to cut the paper sheets so that they would fit properly inside the journal but would have a cool pattern instead of an uneven edge--I can't cut straight no matter what. The wave pattern sort of goes with the quote, so I was pretty happy with it, especially as a first attempt. In the future, I see myself making more complicated books with calendars, thematic series of quotes, and cut paper designs on the pages):

If I've learned nothing else since I started delving into the world of paper crafting (which isn't true because I've learned a lot), it's that there is nothing craft/scrap-booking scissors aren't useful for.